Fig trees can benefit the climate by transforming carbon dioxide into stone

Some fig trees can convert surprisingly great love for carbon dioxide to stone, ensuring that the carbon stays in the soil long after the tree has died. This means that fig trees plants for forestry or their fruit could offer additional climate advantages through this carbon sequestration process.

All trees take co₂ From the air, and most of this carbon typically ends up as structural molecules used to build the plant, such as cellulose. Some trees, however, convert Co₂ Into a crystal compound called calcium oxalate, which bacteria in the tree and soil can then convert into calcium carbonate, the main component of stone such as limb and chalk.

Mineral carbon can remain within soil for much longer than it can in the organic substances of the tree. The trees known to store carbon in this way include the Iroco tree (Milicia Excelsa) That grows in tropical Africa and is used for wood but does not produce food.

Now Mike Rowley at the University of Zurich in Switzerland and his colleagues has found that three species of Fig Tree, resident of the Samburu country in Kenya, can also produce calcium carbonate from_2.

“A large part of the trees become calcium carbonate above the ground,” says Rowley. “We [also] See whole root structures that have largely turned to calcium carbonate in the soil where it should not be, at high concentrations.

The team identified first₂ Is released from calcium carbonate. Then they measured how far away they could detect calcium carbonate in the surrounding soil and analysis samples of the trees to see where in their suitcases calcium carbonate was produced.

“What really was a surprise and I’m still kind of scrolling from is that [calcium carbonate] Had really gone much deeper into the tree structures than I expected, “says Rowley, who will present the work at the Goldschmidt conference in Prague, the Czech Republic, this week.” I accelerated it to be a superficial process in cracks and weaknesses within the tree structure.

The researchers will need to do more work to calculate how much the carbon trees store, as well as how much water they need and how resistant they are in different climates. But if fig trees can be incorporated into future replanting projects, they could be both a food source and carbon wash, says Rowley.